Today is the last day of 2016 and the Sun’s surface is absolutely spotless, but there is some activity on the solar limb with two lovely prominences on show.

Happy New Year everyone :-)

White light image taken with a Canon 70D camera and a 100-400mm lens with a 2x converter fitted with a glass solar filter, exposure 1/500th second and ISO320.

H-Alpha image is a composite image to capture the solar disc and the faint prominences. Taken with a 60mm Lunt solar telescope and a Canon 70D fitted with a 2x Barlow lens, exposure for disc 1/200th second and ISO400, prominences exposure 1/30th second and ISO500.

Over the last few months I’ve observed that the current sunspot level on the surface of the Sun has rapidly diminished and we've had many days with a spotless Sun.

At first, it was quite exciting to see the blank surface after so many years of spotted active regions marking the solar disc, but now it’s so quite and bland in the white light spectrum. But the Sun is still very interesting in Hydrogen Alpha spectrum using my Lunt solar telescope, and these huge coronal holes that keep opening up on the Suns surface are just fascinating!

If there’s something exciting happening in the night sky and also on the surface of the Sun, many astrophotographers worldwide, including myself post there images here at http://www.spaceweather.com so please check in every now and then as you’ll be amazed at what you’ll see.​Noeleen :-)

​We visited the scenic country town of Killarney in the Southern Downs area of Queensland for two days and had a wonderful clear view looking over the countryside toward the mountains. I just knew that it was the perfect place to capture the Sun setting behind the mountains….

Earlier in the day I captured a picture of the Sun safely with my solar set-up by using a solar filter on my Canon 100-400mm camera lens, but the sun was completely blank. Please see image below:

~ Spotless Sun at Killarney ~

This time for a change I made a montage of images to show the sequence of the Sun setting, that golden colour in the background of the pictures is very real, the whole sky was this stunning soft yellow colour… it was just gorgeous!

I might also say, while sitting there with my setup waiting for the Sun to go down there were so many little birds flying to and fro catching the bugs rising from the long grasses…it was ever so lovely.What an absolutely beautiful world we live in :-)